Although the Internet is touted as turning the world into a large village, interactions between large groups of individuals are not typically handled in a synchronous manner such as would be expected in a “village”. In such a conversation-like synchronous interaction, individuals generally expect a response within a short, bounded time, which response allows a further discussion and a comfortable flow of information.
Most interactive solutions only work when the audience for an information provision event is small, such as under 20 or 30 participants. In larger groups, the audience is either entirely passive, as in television, or can only interact asynchronously, such as via a message board. Generally, as the group gets larger, the interaction becomes more difficult. In token-based systems, where only one participant can present information at a time, most participants cannot participate. In free-for-all systems, the noise level is too high. Even in mediated systems, such as “chat rooms”, the mediator becomes overwhelmed if there are too many participants. Furthermore, a significant amount of the audience's time is wasted on questions that are of no interest to most of the audience.
Exemplary ways of transmitting information on the Internet (and outside of it) include:
(a) Static or dynamic downloadable content, such as WWW pages, text, graphics and video (corresponding to books and video cassettes).
(b) Interactive software, for use in a home setting.
(c) Conferencing tools for enabling a small group of persons to interact as if they were in one large room.
(d) Voting tools, where participants can answer a poll regarding a particular posed question.
(e) Web-Casting tools, which stream a live or recorded event to a large number of participants.
(f) Chat rooms, where each participant can voice an opinion.
A particular type of interaction event occurs during on-line education. It would be extremely desirable to have very large classes, thus keeping costs down and making gifted lecturers available to large audiences. However, as noted above, such large classes do not usually provide a reasonable interaction level. For many students, interaction in class is a requirement for complete understanding of the learning material. Currently however, interactive on-line classes are limited to small numbers. Furthermore, much of the student participation is after the class and/or via a message board.
It is known i n on-line education systems to divide a class into groups and provide open discussion questions for each group. It is also known to provide credit points to students that find suitable source material in an on-line class.